Chương 2
Leah extended her hand.
He looked at it as though he had forgotten the object belonged to someone else.
“That’s mine,” she said.
His fingers closed around it for one reflexive second.
Then he placed it in her palm.
“Who was your mother?”
Leah folded the locket shut. “Claire Bell.”
Julian swayed almost imperceptibly.
Eleanor said his name.
He did not answer.
“My mother died when I was four,” Leah continued. Her voice felt detached from her. “Her friend raised me. Rosa Moreno. She gave me the locket when I turned eighteen.”
Julian studied her face. She saw him searching it, taking measurements he had no right to take—the distance between her eyes, the shape of her chin, whatever he believed grief had preserved.
Leah stood. The satchel’s strap had split where Eleanor grabbed it. She looped the broken leather around her wrist.
“I need to leave.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “Security needs a statement.”
“Security can have mine tomorrow.”
“You do not dictate—”
“Eleanor.”
Julian’s voice was quiet.
She stopped.
The authority in his tone did not impress Leah. It frightened her. Not for herself. For the way Eleanor’s shoulders changed beneath her beaded gown, shrinking and hardening at once.
Leah had seen marriages speak without words. Her adoptive mother, Rosa, had cleaned houses for wealthy families when flower work was slow. Leah sometimes waited in kitchens after school and watched husbands open refrigerators they had no interest in, simply to avoid answering their wives. She had learned that power in a marriage rarely lived where outsiders expected it to.
Julian turned to Leah.
“Let my driver take you home.”
“No.”
“Please.”
She almost laughed. The word sounded foreign in his mouth.
“I came with the floral crew.”
The floral crew had vanished into the service hallway. Leah could not blame them. Their company, Verdant House Events, depended on Halcyon contracts. Standing too near her could be interpreted as choosing a side.
“I’ll arrange transportation,” Julian said.
“I can arrange my own.”
She put the receipts back into the satchel, then the lipstick, scissors, pins, keys, and locket. The young server handed her a prescription bottle that had rolled beneath the banquet table. Rosa’s name was still printed on it. Leah had kept the empty bottle because it held three emergency sewing needles and a folded ten-dollar bill.
The server did not look at the label.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded.
Julian followed her toward the ballroom doors. Eleanor took two steps after him.
“Julian, we have three hundred guests.”
“You have three hundred witnesses.”
The words reached only those nearest them, but they spread through the room faster than anything spoken loudly.
Leah entered the service corridor, where the gold light ended and the practical fluorescent lights began. Stainless steel carts lined the wall. Crates of empty bottles waited beside a gray door marked STAFF ONLY. The air smelled of coffee, hot linen, and the chemical lemon used on the floors.
She walked quickly until the ballroom doors closed behind her.
Then she stopped.
Her chest hurt. She pressed one hand against the wall and tried to breathe without making noise.
A dishwasher pushed a rack of glasses past the far end of the corridor. Two cooks argued beside an open refrigerator. Somewhere, a timer beeped and continued beeping because nobody claimed it. The ordinary hotel noise went on, indifferent to paternity, accusation, and the collapse of expensive marriages.
Leah opened the satchel.
The locket lay on top.
She had seen the photograph thousands of times. Claire at twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, with her head turned slightly away from the camera. Claire had been beautiful in an unfinished way. Her hair escaped pins. One eyebrow rose higher than the other. The pale-green brooch at her collar was the same one Leah now wore, though years had dulled the enamel around the edges.
Rosa had called it Claire’s good-luck pin.
Never the Halcyon pin. Never a gift from Julian Mercer. Never evidence.
Leah closed the bag so hard the broken strap snapped completely.
The ballroom door opened.
Julian stepped into the corridor alone.
Leah turned before he could speak.
“Don’t follow me.”
He stopped.
For the first time that evening, he appeared his age. The gold ballroom light behind him sharpened the lines around his mouth.
“I knew Claire.”
“That was clear.”
“I loved her.”
Leah tightened her grip on the satchel.
He glanced at the brooch.
“She wore that every day.”
“My mother wore lots of things.”
“It was made for the hotel’s first floral program. My mother designed it. Only twelve existed.”
“So?”
“She gave one to Claire.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
Leah wanted to ask why. She wanted to ask what kind of relationship required a custom brooch and a lie about a dead child. Instead she said, “I have to go.”
“Did Rosa ever mention me?”
“No.”
“Did Claire leave letters?”
“No.”
“Her papers?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“My mother died when I was four. Rosa died eight months ago. I spent the last year of her life keeping track of pills and insurance calls and whether she’d eaten. I wasn’t cataloging secrets for you.”
Julian absorbed the rebuke without defending himself.
The ballroom door opened again. Eleanor stood inside it, her expression composed enough that only someone close would have noticed the pulse in her throat.
“Julian,” she said, “the police have been called.”
He turned.
“By whom?”
“By the foundation’s security liaison.”
“You mean by you.”
“I mean a valuable bracelet is missing.”
Leah looked from one of them to the other.
“You accused me because you saw the locket.”
Eleanor’s eyes shifted to her.
“I accused you because you were where you should not have been.”
“I was working.”
“There are boundaries in this hotel.”
“Yes,” Leah said. “I noticed.”
Eleanor took the insult without blinking.
Julian stepped between them, not dramatically, but enough to interrupt their sight line.
May you like
“Go back to the ballroom,” he told his wife.
“Do not speak to me as though I’m an employee.”
